A barbarian and a wizard enter the studio apartment home of a fighter. They find the fighter in the middle of a large open space in the apartment.
The fighter is holding a brush and using it to apply bold strokes of paint upon a canvas.
The wizard asks the fighter, "What are you doing?"
The fighter replies, "I'm painting a masterpiece."
The wizard asks, "Why?"
The fighter answers, "Because I'm a student of war."
The wizard asks, "What does painting have to do with war? Oh, wait, are you painting a scene from a battle?"
The fighter replies, "No. I'm depicting a field of flowers blooming in the height of Spring."
The wizard asks, "So what does THAT have anything to do with studying war?"
The fighter stops painting for a moment, turns to the wizard, and says, "Nothing...and everything."
The fighter turns back to the painting to finish the corners on a patch of daffodils.
The barbarian interjects, "Pretty colors."
THE END...or is it?
(referencing page 73 of the 5e PHB)
Besides, what use would a fighter have for the finner arts?
...
oh
Before you can harm, you need to know how to heal.
Reminds me of a line in the Prince of Nothing novels, where the teacher gestures to the forest and asks what his students see. They mention leaves, branches, stones, grass.
And one student says war. A war for sunlight.
Learning to paint was a vital part of the karate kid's training.
Every soldier in the Roman army knew how to build. They built bridges, walls, and roads, and the various fortified camps that helped Rome project its military might across the empire and beyond.
Noon wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
I don't think this thread went the way storyteller-zero was hoping it would...
On a related note and a possibly closer-to-home level, how many people here have been involved in Scouts? (I was, for a short time (decades ago; I've long since grown to dislike the organization, but I use the skills I picked up on a reasonably regular basis), and two of my good friends are leaders in Guides.)
I ask because, within Scouting, it's a pretty well-known story about how the guy who founded it was a military officer who managed to get quite a lot of actionable intelligence past enemy lines without raising suspicion.... simply by disguising his maps of enemy fortifications as entomology drawings, and playing up the "bumbling English naturalist" stereotype to defuse suspicion. (He also used stained-glass sketches as ciphers (the seams on the glass reflected the movements of the hands in semaphore, with symbols on the glass providing more detail - i.e. "nine guns west" is spelled out to show the number and position of artillery, but a symbol on that panel of the glass shows the caliber and size of the guns, which normally would take too much time to spell out in semaphore) under cover of studying historical architecture, but I can't find a good image of that. The big thing here is that without artistic ability, this would be a transparently obvious method of spying.) Every bit the role of a soldier rather than a classical "spy", methods like this were needed when planning any form of assault or maneuvers through enemy territory.
Add to that the important role of surveying - made even more important in seige attacks or with artillery, or indeed with long-range magic - and you can make a damn good case that artistic ability is vital to a military force - if not vital for every soldier. But then again, not every soldier is a Battle Master.
....Plus, yeah, the transparently-obvious wuxia link. Is one's calligraphy rooted in their swordplay, or their swordplay rooted in their calligraphy? Both.... and neither.
I like how, at least, it's worded to handle both extremes.
Eisenhower was a painter.
Nuff' said?
Nah, I think I've got a better example right here. About a certain Master Sergeant who served the Air Force for 20 years. Dude then decided that he'd rather paint. But oh well, you probably never heard of him.
Vahnyu wrote:
Nevvur wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Cyber-Dave wrote:
Off topic, but apart from no incoming shells, how do you know the training level of the other side?
To respond the main topic: It is just the begining because the path of the student of war has no end and even a grandmaster feels like he is only a student who just started to understand his art.
For those who are not very familliar with martial related philosophy I suggest to read the book of the five rings from Musashi that explained that his martial method could be applied to any other art or craft industry. As a matter of fact Musashi's print and poetry that remain are considered realy good for the time and he had no other teacher (know so far) but himself, claiming that he learned using the same method he used to learn the path of the warrior.
Learning new arts is a way to keep the spirit of a new student and improve even at a "high level" of practice.
@ Noon: Intelligence ?
Oh, when the USMC officer said they had potential to be a problem, he didn't mean they had potential to be a problem at all - he already had the (hapstance) solution.
Lysandre01 wrote:
Noon wrote:
Noon wrote:
I recalled a Jet Li movie about an assassination attempt on the first emperor of China. "HERO"
In the movie, mastery of weapon style also equated to a mastery of calligraphy because of the movement of strokes being analogical to the movement of a weapon.
Art can translate into martial prowess in ways people wouldn't guess at first glance.
"Wax on, wax off"
"He said that you were the best, and I didn't even know you were a master archer. So why do you work as a carpenter?"
"Because the way of the bow serves for everything, and my dream was to work with wood. Besides, an archer who follows the way does not need a bow or an arrow or a target."
Paulo Coelho, The Way of the Bow
Too much high culture and philosophy here. I'll try and make a microscopic funny.
A student of war is a soldier. A soldier is constantly moving between battlefields or waiting for a battle to happen. Why take up art? Because he was very bored.